74Runneer

I have 74 road runner with a 318 and about 6 months ago I put in a new voltage limiter to fix my gas gauge problem. At first it worked, the needle went up to a half a tank which was exactly what I had in it, I was very excited that it worked. But after a week I would turn the car on, the needle would go to the correct position and then eventually go back to pinned at 0. Sometime it would come back on and sometimes it wouldn't. Well now it rarely ever works. Does this sound like a grounding issue? I bought a rte solid state limiter, I hope that's still working right.

Also, after I finished replacing the limiter, my radio stopped working. I'm fairly certain that I just didn't hook it up right when I put everything back together but I wasn't quite sure of what connection that I need to check. I'm thinking that this one is a ground issue too. Its just the stock radio. Any help would be appreciated

440roadrunner

Not sure on the radio. Keep in mind how old these girls are. Depending on "where your car has been" IE wet, rust, etc, the wiring terminals and connectors could have a lot of corrosion damage

Radios are pretty basic.......you need power, ground, and an speaker and antenna. Any one of those could knock you 'off the air.'

Usually, if you have ground, power, speaker, you can hear a thump in the speaker when you turn it on. If the antenna wire / antenna is defective, it might be difficult to tell if the radio is outputting anything. That is, you won't hear static

So far as your gauges, I would agree, this might be a grounding issue.

Have you had the cluster out? The problems on my 67 Dart were extensive. I try to get guys to think as an "end to end system" instead of just "it might be this" or "might be that."

Think about how the gauges work, the connections the sender wires go through, and so on.

On my 67, something that might be material to your problem is, that there are springy brass contact fingers crimped into the PC board...........which form the "socket" into which the IVR fits. On my 67, these fingers were not actually making contact with the PC board traces. I had to solder jumpers across them. This is in addition to other problems

Also, connect a ground pigtail to one of the screws on the PC board where it fastens to the cluster. Run this wire to someplace like the column support and ground it. In my case the blue / white here was added as power coming in to bypass the broken pins in the connector

74Runneer

Okay I just looked at the radio today and realized that the clock doesn't come on or anything. I turn the on/off dial and there is no thud like normal. I couldn't find and wires that are disconnected. Ill have to take a better look at it and follow the power and ground wires to their source. Then after I fix the radio issue ill focus on the gauges.